Not everyone who had arrived was a warden. Several kinds of support had accompanied them, to manage everything from food and shelter to mental and physical health, care for animals and care for children born here whose parents had been born elsewhere. There were even people helping to keep the transport of goods in motion around the locks and between boat and wagon because those weren’t all luxury items.
That included staff to run the post office and bank. Strangely, there were no messages from our friends, only from Jaelis and Terenei’s family and Aryennos’ parents, which Serru printed to read ter, and acknowledgement from Brightridge’s wardens. The sympathetic post office clerk assured us that it was a thing he was hearing repeatedly right now—it had been longer than it should but people were returning and waking slowly. They were assuming that it had something to do with the unprecedented number of people and animals dying all at once. People were coming back, but there was a distinct g.
I hoped it was only a g, and that whatever system was behind it hadn’t lost anyone. We wouldn’t know until ter, though, and possibly the slower pace was an inadvertent mercy for those tackling the consequences.
Once we’d made sure that there was nothing in any of our friends’ bags that we were going to need—Myu’s basket and food and toys, for example—the clerk helped us box up all four and send them off. Then he came over to the bank, and with calm efficiency, he and Serru showed me how to access my bank account and store my house in it. It was actually very simple, not unlike the inventory that came with a bag.
We came back outside to retrieve Myu from a cook who was taking a few minutes’ break and had offered to py with her while we did what we needed to do.
Logan, without his creepy shadow, was leaning against a wall across the street; while Serru scooped up Myu and thanked the cook, I crossed the street.
“Headed out?” he asked, with no particur expression or inflection.
I nodded. “There was no answer when I knocked earlier.”
“I was busy. There are wardens gathering at Stormoak Bridge, the closest settlement I can think of to where her hideout is. They’re going to clean up as completely as they can.”
“And find your friends.”
“I don’t know if they’re still friends. But yes.”
“Good. They’re going to have some trouble working through all that, but I doubt they’re going to bme you. That doesn’t seem to be how people here think.”
“Yeah. Maybe they won’t.” He shrugged, while I tried to decide whether there had been emphasis on the pronoun or not. “I should get you onto the newcomer’s message list. C’mon.” He straightened up and gestured to the post office.
Serru just nodded a greeting to Logan as we passed.
The clerk didn’t bat an eye over the request to add me to a private list, just did so and expined how to access it. It was easier than email, really. I could read it there, or print it out to take with me. Logan pointed out to him that I was also entitled to be on several others—the ones for healers in general, alchemists, wardens which included paramedics, and the Purification potion workgroup, and I found myself duly added.
“Reach any decisions?” he asked outside. Serru was on a bench with the cook and Myu a short distance down, waiting with no sign of impatience.
“Not completely. Probably I’m going to the Axis.”
“Figured you were that crazy.”
“It’s not hard to figure out that price. The only people who live way longer than a normal lifespan are newcomers who’ve been to the Axis.”
“It’s not as fun as it sounds.”
“No. That’s a price, not a bonus. But there’s a lot to experience here. And even with no mosslings or zombies to protect against, there’s always a need for paramedics. There is very definitely a need for someone to help with newly-arrived confused newcomers.”
He snorted. “You can have that job if you really think you want it. Good luck when you get someone who thinks they already get it and will not listen.”
“And we need to keep her bottled up. I don’t know if there’s a long-term solution for that particur danger, but until there is, I’m not in favour of letting her go. You said there are answers in the Axis, maybe more info will help. But I don’t want to watch my friends get older if I don’t.”
“Maybe you should ask Serru about that.”
“What?”
He shrugged. “Just a thought. You do you, bro. See y’around.” He turned and walked away.
We left Drumsong Cascade both on foot, with nothing except our respective personal bags and one little cat we took turns carrying when she got tired of trotting along with us and investigating wind-ruffled grass and butterflies. Passing wagoners offered us a ride; we declined politely each time. At our leisurely pace on foot, Serru figured it would take us about three days to reach the Axis. I didn’t want to shorten that.
We stopped for lunch at a tavern that had a house across the road and a farm with a garden and cows and poultry, and an unstaffed post office and bank, but no other buildings in sight. The whole thing was nestled in a little hollow between gentle hills.
There were still no messages from our friends. There were messages from several of Serru’s family, demanding confirmation that she was safe. She replied to them, collectively, on the spot, and asked them to pass it on.
No one would let us pay for lunch.
The tavern staff and the other customers spoke in murmurs that we couldn’t make out, and did their best to give us space, but every one of them found a moment to say thanks, sometimes with teary eyes or cracking voices.
At dusk we reached a vilge. We checked the post office first. Still no messages.
We spent the night in the inn where the whole tavern thing was repeated—this time with one person breaking down into tears over the thought of what had almost happened and what ens friends in Drumsong Cascade had been through.
“This is not restful,” I said, as we colpsed into bed with Myu already stretched across the foot of it. “Is it a bad thing to break out tents for the next couple of nights?”
Serru snuggled against me. “I’ll find pces we can camp. I understand but this is exhausting and we don’t really have the ability to cope with it right now. We have plenty of tents and food and even firewood. We can just stop in post offices and otherwise keep moving through settlements. It may take us an extra day or two.”
“That’s fine. I’m not in a hurry. The only urgency right now is getting Myu and Heket together again and Heket doesn’t seem to even be back yet. And Myu’s not acting stressed.”
That meant we went off-road, or at least onto narrow tracks that would support only foot traffic, but I was absolutely good with that. I was with someone with supertive navigational abilities and a detailed map in her head.
Shortly before lunch, we emerged into a vilge, mostly so we could visit the post office. I switched to my aquian form, in case anyone was going by descriptions of human-me, although I traded my stained and ripped sarong for my felid skirt of several geometric greens and blues and the matching sleeveless top with the asymmetrical front. Serru tied a sparkly fringed mesh scarf over her hair that didn’t so much hide it as distract from it and borrowed my grey jacket to wear over her green clothes.
Finally, finally, we found a message from Aryennos, letting us know he was home and asking where he should go to find us. Serru replied to all four of our friends, not just him, with a suggestion of a town and an inn in the central Midnds. Only the one message, but that was so encouraging that we stopped to get fresh bread and a jar of a felid-safe savoury spread with a short shelf life to go with Serru’s gathered greens for lunch. Myu was very interested in the spread when we stopped off-road to eat it; we made sandwiches for ourselves and gave Myu a generous serving of the spread with her fish.
The unstaffed post office we found under the lowering sun in a settlement of only a handful of houses had a message for us from Zanshe. She was leaving first thing in the morning for the pce Serru had suggested. So was Aryennos, according to a second message, and he promised to be careful and take public transportation. Both had safely received the personal bags we’d mailed to them.
Camping out, sheltered by a stand of trees and with a bright stream for water, was much more rexing than being around people. Serru’s road food tasted better right then than even Reese’s cooking could have. Myu beat up the toy mouse Heket had been making her when we’d met them, then ate her freshly-fried fish and settled herself by the fire for a bath. Human-form, I brought out my guitar to mess around with it for a while, just because the evening seemed to call for it.
All three of us slept in the same tent.
For the record, there was nothing sexual about it. We were both still too shaken, and I had far too much spinning around in my mind. Oddly, it was harder to get my head around the idea of sex with the knowledge that I’d never see Grace again than it had been with our agreement about no possessiveness or jealousy.
Honestly, Logan was probably closer to the truth when he’d referred to my isekai harem than I’d realized at the time. Terenei didn’t do sex, but was always up for contact; Serru preferred girls in bed and I had good reason to believe she was attracted physically to my aquian and dragon forms; Aryennos had been careful to respect boundaries but I knew he liked felids of any gender, I just hadn’t asked how he felt about mine; I was less sure about Heket or Zanshe, and obviously how much I cared about them, about any of them, had nothing to do with sex, but this world had fewer stupid hangups and associations and I wasn’t ruling anything out.
But Serru needed space, and I needed to grieve, and that could wait. There were more important things right now, and lots of time.
Midmorning, Serru paused by a small river, looking thoughtfully at a narrow footbridge.
“We can go two ways on the far side. The popution is more dense in the Midnds and this is a busy area. I can’t promise a comfortable campsite with room for a fire and all that no one will see and investigate, although I can find us a pce for a tent. Or we can take a slightly longer route and we’ll reach one of my sisters a little after dark. She’s in a vilge but we won’t need to draw attention any more than we have visiting post offices.”
“She won’t mind us dropping in with no warning and running off in the morning?”
Serru regarded me with one rosy eyebrow high. “She’s my sister. You think she isn’t used to me doing things like that?”
“It’s your call. Whichever you think is better.”
“Feriosa it is.”
We couldn’t find an easy post office in the middle of the day, so we waited. Under a darkening sky, we reached the vilge Serru was aiming for. The post office clerk had left for the day, but we could still check for messages. Again, Serru made sure her bright rosy hair was covered and pulled my grey jacket on; I switched to aquian, since my centaur and dragon forms were too visible, and I wasn’t sure my felid form could handle even a brief time in a vilge. This wasn’t the time for a meltdown.
Both Terenei and Heket had finally replied. Everyone was rather unsettled by the deys, but all were relieved that everyone was back. Our st pair promised to join us. Heket missed Myu and was gd she was safe and not distressed by the separation, and thanked us multiple times in the short message for looking after her.
